Judges9chapter 9

Judges 9:1-3

Gideon told Israel at 8:23 that neither he nor his son would rule them, and his son opens this chapter canvassing for the crown. Abimelech argues from kinship rather than from any claim of right, and the phrase he uses, I am your bone and your flesh, is the formula Laban used of Jacob at Genesis 29:14 and the one the tribes use to make David king at 2 Samuel 5:1. Shechem is his mother's town, named at 8:31, so among those men the seventy sons of Gideon are outsiders and he is not.

Judges 9:4-5

The money comes out of the temple treasury of Baal-berith, the god Israel took up as soon as Gideon died at 8:33, so the shrine funds the coup. Seventy pieces of silver buy seventy deaths, one coin a brother, and the men hired are called vain and light, the same sort of following Jephthah gathers at 11:3. The killing is done upon one stone, which reads as an execution block rather than a battle, and the youngest son escapes by hiding, as Joash later does at 2 Kings 11:2.

Judges 9:6

The crowning happens by the plain of the pillar in Shechem, and the King James margin reads oak. Joshua 24:26 set a great stone under an oak by the sanctuary of the Lord in this same town, on the day Israel swore to serve the Lord and no other god. Keil and Delitzsch take the two trees as one and read the coronation as staged at the covenant memorial itself, and the text names the spot without settling it. The house of Millo is the citadel quarter of the town, and the name turns up again in Jerusalem at 2 Samuel 5:9.

Judges 9:7

Gerizim is the mountain of blessing, appointed at Deuteronomy 11:29 and 27:12 and used at Joshua 8:33 when the nation stood between the two hills and heard the law read. Jotham climbs the blessing side and speaks a curse from it. His opening line sets the terms, hearken unto me, that God may hearken unto you, so what follows is offered as testimony rather than as a story told for its own sake.

Judges 9:8-9

Trees choosing a king is the shape of the speech, and the only other fable of this kind in Scripture is the thistle and the cedar that Jehoash sends to Amaziah at 2 Kings 14:9 and 2 Chronicles 25:18. What the trees offer is anointing, which is the Torah word for making a priest or a king, so the picture is a throne rather than a captaincy for one campaign. The olive answers first, because olive oil is what fills the lamps and does the anointing, and its reason for refusing is that the promotion would cost it the work it already does.

Judges 9:10-13

Olive, fig and vine are the three crops that stand for a settled land, listed together in Deuteronomy 8:8 and drawn again in the picture of every man under his vine and his fig tree at 1 Kings 4:25. Each refuses in the same terms, that ruling would cost it its own fruit, and each answer names something the tree gives away for nothing. The vine's phrase, my wine, which cheereth God and man, points at the drink offering of Numbers 15:5 as much as at the table.

Judges 9:14-15

The bramble carries no fruit and throws no shade a man would stand in, and dry thorn is the quickest thing in a field to catch fire. Its offer is trust in my shadow, and the verb behind put your trust is the word for taking refuge in God at Psalm 2:12. The threat attached to it happens twice before the chapter ends, fire coming out of the bramble to devour the cedars of Lebanon, which are the tallest trees Scripture names and the furthest thing from a thorn.

Judges 9:16-18

Jotham drops the picture and names the men standing below him. His charge has three parts: Gideon fought for Shechem and adventured his life, they killed his sons upon one stone, and they crowned the one son born to a maidservant because he was a local. The words upon one stone repeat verse 5 exactly, which is the speech quoting the narrative back at the town that did it.

Judges 9:19-21

The curse is framed as a condition and it runs both ways, fire from Abimelech devouring Shechem and fire from Shechem devouring Abimelech. Both halves are reported as done by verse 49 and verse 53, and the narrator says so outright at verse 57. Jotham then runs to Beer and leaves the book, so the one survivor of the seventy never comes back to claim anything.

Judges 9:22-24

Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem, and this is the first place in Scripture where the words evil spirit stand together, checked against the King James text; the next are Saul's at 1 Samuel 16:14 and after. Readers divide over what the sending means, some taking a created spirit given its errand and others a spirit of suspicion stirred among men, with Gill and Clarke both laying weight on the second while holding that God governs it. Verse 24 gives the reason ahead of the events, which the book rarely does, and the blood is laid on the town as well as on the man, because Shechem paid for the killing.

Judges 9:25-27

The town turns first by robbing the roads, which cuts off the tolls and traffic a ruler lives on. Gaal the son of Ebed arrives with a following and the men of Shechem put their confidence in him, the same confidence they had given Abimelech three years earlier. The cursing happens at the vintage feast inside the house of their god, so the break with Abimelech is sworn in the shrine that paid for him at verse 4.

Judges 9:28-29

Who is Abimelech, and who is Shechem: Gaal tells the town to go back to its old line, serve the men of Hamor the father of Shechem, which names Genesis 33:19 and Genesis 34 out loud. Hamor's house is the family Simeon and Levi destroyed after Dinah, so the appeal reaches past Israel altogether to the Canaanite city Jacob camped beside. He also calls Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal, the Baal-fighting name given at 6:32, and turns it into a reason for a Baal-berith town to be rid of him.

Judges 9:30-33

Zebul holds the town for Abimelech and sends word privily, so the man Gaal dismissed as an officer at verse 28 is the one who undoes him. The plan he sends is the ambush of Joshua 8 in small compass, lie in the field by night, rise at sunrise, and let the city come out to you. Nobody in the chapter asks God about any of it, and no priest, prophet or word from the Lord appears in the fifty-seven verses.

Judges 9:34-36

Gaal stands in the entering of the gate, which is where a town's leaders sat to judge and to talk, and from there he sees men coming down off the hills. Zebul tells him he is looking at the shadow of the mountains, which holds him in the gateway while the companies close on him. Shadow is the bramble's own word from verse 15, where the thorn invited the trees to trust in its shadow, and here the man who trusted Gaal is told that armed men are a shadow.

Judges 9:37-39

Meonenim means the soothsayers, so the second company comes past the diviners' oak, a landmark carrying the name of the practice Deuteronomy 18:10 to 14 forbids outright. Zebul then throws Gaal's own sentence back at him, where is now thy mouth, and pushes him out of the gate to fight. Gaal goes out before the men of Shechem, and the town he talked into a rebellion is the only army he has.

Judges 9:40-41

The fighting ends where it began, at the gate, and the wounded fall in the entering of it. Abimelech does not go into the city; he pulls back to Arumah and leaves Zebul to expel Gaal and his brethren, which keeps the town standing for another day. What comes next shows that the restraint was timing.

Judges 9:42-45

Three companies this time instead of four, with the gate held so that the people in the fields have nowhere to run back to. Abimelech takes the city, kills the people in it, beats it down and sows it with salt, which announces that nothing is to grow there again; Deuteronomy 29:23 describes a judged land as brimstone and salt. Leviticus 2:13 puts salt in every offering as the salt of the covenant, and here the same substance is used to unmake a town. The place that crowned him is the first place he levels.

Judges 9:46-49

The survivors shut themselves inside the stronghold of the house of the god Berith, the same temple that handed Abimelech the silver at verse 4, and it does not save them. He cuts a bough on mount Zalmon, tells his men to copy what they have seen him do, and burns about a thousand men and women in the hold. Jotham's line at verse 20, let fire come out from Abimelech and devour the men of Shechem, is carried out with an axe and a pile of branches, and the trees of the fable are the fuel.

Judges 9:50-52

Thebez is named twice in the whole Bible, here and in Joab's message at 2 Samuel 11:21, and it sits a few hours north of Shechem. The people do what Shechem did, crowd into the strong tower and shut the door behind them, and Abimelech does what worked before and goes hard to the door to burn it. Going too near a wall is exactly what Joab's messenger is later told the king will ask about, and this siege is the example he is given to quote.

Judges 9:53-54

The upper millstone was the stone a woman turned by hand, light enough to lift and heavy enough to kill, so the weapon comes off a roof and out of a kitchen. A stone killed seventy brothers at verse 5 and a stone kills the man who used it, which is the chapter's own arithmetic. His last order is given so that men say not of me, A woman slew him, and Judges 4:9 had already put the honour of Sisera's death in a woman's hand; Saul gives his armourbearer the same order at 1 Samuel 31:4 and is refused. Joab quotes this death from memory at 2 Samuel 11:21, generations later, which shows how well it was remembered.

Judges 9:55-57

The army goes home the moment he dies, which says what had been holding it together. The last two verses are the narrator's own summing up, that God rendered the wickedness of Abimelech and rendered the evil of the men of Shechem upon their heads, and that the curse of Jotham came upon them. The book states its judgment here in its own words, and the chapter closes on the man who spoke from Gerizim and was never heard from again.